Thursday, November 12, 2009

In April, I talked with Steve Bierfeldt, a Ron Paul staffer who was stopped and questioned by TSA agents at Lambert Airport because he was carrying a metal box with $4,700 in cash inside. The agents overstepped their authority, verbally abused him and didn't know the law (it's not illegal to travel with that amount of money -- if it was, no one would fly to Las Vegas!). The TSA agents also didn't know that Steve was recording the whole encounter on his iPhone (we played the audio as part of the interview, which you can listen to here).

Afterwards, Steve sued the TSA for unlawful detention and other issues with help from the ACLU. This week, in response to that litigation, the TSA revised its rules and reminded agents that carrying large amounts of cash is not against the law. Hopefully, it also gave them some lessons in our other constitutional rights.